Liquidators offload Tinkler’s Patinack assets

He might be banned from managing corporations and bankrupt to boot but Nathan Tinkler can still rely on his mate Gerry Harvey to agree to a round of golf, thanks in part perhaps to the efforts of Deloitte restructuring guru Neil Cussen.

Cussen revealed yesterday that he and colleague David Mansfield had sold the last property holdings attaching to Tinkler’s former horse breeding and agistment business Patinack Farm in a $15 million deal expected to see secured creditor Harvey paid out in full.

The sale completes what Cussen told SiN was a complex and difficult 15 month process to sell the property holdings at Sandy Hollow, Broke and Port Macquarie – all of which are in NSW’s mid-north coast and Hunter Valley regions.

“It such a big property, 3,300 acres, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” Cussen said. “The first secured creditor will get paid out but it’s unlikely that the second and third secured creditors – which are the ATO and a large investment bank out of the US – will get paid in full and there’ll unfortunately be precious little for the unsecured creditors,” he said.

Cussen and Mansfield were appointed voluntary administrators (VAs) of the Patinack group in August 2015. Two attempts to restructure the group’s debts via deeds of company arrangement were attempted. Both failed.

“Mr Tinkler had the property on the market for some years and under the DoCA I wasn’t seeking the finance, it was him and his advisors so I guess we were relying on third parties to do that,” Cussen said.

“We gave that some extensions of time but in the end I had to call it a day and put it into liquidation and take over.”

Cussen declined to identify the buyer but said it was a local. “We’ve had various Chinese parties interested but they couldn’t get the finance,” he said.

About the Author

Insolvency News Online illuminates the practice of insolvency Australia-wide, highlighting the triumphs and travails of the nation’s registered practitioners and the accounting and legal professionals who work with them. INO is produced by Peter Gosnell, former business editor and senior business reporter at The Daily Telegraph newspaper. During a decade-long career, your correspondent reported on such notable corporate collapses as HIH, One.Tel, Westpoint and Fincorp as well as some of the nation's highest profile bankruptcies and the investigations and prosecutions arising from Australia's most notorious instances of white-collar crime.

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